Migrants target vehicles of Britons returning home in Calais as French police
say they can't cope with rising numbers

French police stopped 400 migrants in Calais this weekend seeking to take advantage of end-of-holiday traffic jams to board around 100 vehicles bound for Britain.

The sharp rise in attempts to sneak into Britain came as haulage companies advised their drivers to use other ports, including Cherbourg, Boulogne and Dunkirk, to transport goods to Britain because of the constant threat of migrants boarding their vehicles.

With the migrant issue at boiling point, France’s interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, is due to meet Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, on Tuesday to discuss her plan to build a new Sangatte-style refugee camp centre in the northern port town - a move the British and French governments oppose.

Sangatte, the notorious Red Cross centre that housed up to 1,400 migrants at any one time, closed in 2002.

Anti-riot police were forced to draft in reinforcements and divert lorries over the weekend to other routes as increasingly desperate migrants risked all to stow away aboard stationary vehicles before they drove onto ferries towards Dover.

French police on Monday told the Telegraph that the numbers of migrants they stop in vehicles bound for the UK has now jumped to 3,000 per month.

They expect the figure to hit 30,000 for 2014 and on Saturday alone, they stopped 300 in 60 lorries.

Up to 1,500 people - mainly Eritreans, Sudanese and Afghans - are currently squatting in disused factories in the city, or living in tents and beneath tarpaulins in scrubland by the port terminal. The numbers are rising steadily and are expected to reach up to 5,000 by the end of the year.

Truckers have spoken of increasingly desperate migrants, sometimes armed with knives, iron bars, who leap on to UK-bound ferries.

Over the weekend, police launched a hunt for an Iraqi Kurd people-smuggler who pointed a pump-action shotgun at them as they arrested 15 illegal immigrants who were attempting to hide inside a vehicle parked in Calais.

Meanwhile, three Sudanese migrants suffered severe knife wounds during a vicious fight in the centre of the town over the right to a favourite spot to leap onto passing lorries.

On Saturday, 17 migrants were found close to asphyxiation inside a Dutch tanker and were rescued only after the driver heard them banging to be released.

Hundreds of migrants also sought to take advantage of a huge traffic jam on a motorway into Calais over the weekend to climb onto stationary UK-bound lorries, but also holidaymakers’ vehicles.

Gilles Debove, the Calais area delegate for the Unité SGP Police Force Ouvrière union, said: “They tried all weekend to get to the UK via caravans, motor-homes that were returning home. This is a totally new phenomenon. They will stop at nothing to get across and we cannot cope quite frankly.”

He added: “It can be a very traumatic experience for British holidaymakers finding themselves surrounded by hundreds of migrants.” One family of British holidaymakers this weekend had their bikes stolen from the back of their vehicle in the confusion, he said.

“They used to act alone, now they take huge risks in groups, jumping off bridges onto lorry roofs, and becoming increasingly virulent and daring.

“I’ve seen them throw stones at a lorry windscreen to make it slow down. I saw a lorry driver who got out to deal with some trying to get into the back of his truck while others broke into his cab and stole his mobile phone,” he said.

Now many haulage firms are telling drivers to use other French ports to reach the UK. Others, however, cannot avoid Calais because they have fixed-term contracts with ferry companies that depart from there.

Robin Walkam, 34, a trucker from Hartlepool, said: "It is very dangerous to cross from Calais. The migrants cause a lot of damage.

“It’s like being in a war zone. The only difference is that we have no body armour and can’t carry guns. Sooner or later some driver is going to get killed.”

Hafid Derideche, head of truckers company Atlantic Europe, based in Bordeaux, said: “We see more and more migrants in western France, in ports in Brittany and Le Havre.”

Last Friday Theresa May, the Home Secretary, held top-level talks with Mr Cazeneuve over the migrant crisis.

Mr Cazeneuve rejected Miss Bouchart’s call for a new camp, saying it risked becoming “a gathering point for migrants.”